


Soup/Verdure: A Meditation on Needs

by leslielol



Series: Into the Night’s Mouth [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mando learns to be a dad, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21700765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: He autopilots the ship, but stalls over the controls regardless. The craft hums along a set path, easy as anything. The Mandalorian's grip is purely decorative.He trades what's perfunctory for what's necessary, and collects the child.Post-Chapter 4: Sanctuary, Pre-Chapter 5: The Gunslinger
Relationships: The Mandalorian & Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV), The Mandalorian & The Child
Series: Into the Night’s Mouth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594465
Comments: 34
Kudos: 487





	Soup/Verdure: A Meditation on Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Boy howdy am I ever into this shit.
> 
> I really enjoy the pace of the show and the fact that there are so many in-between spaces. I long to fill them with gentle observational pieces and literally nothing else. :))))))))

The question of where to go next is twofold: it both spills out into darkest space, on for parsecs upon parsecs, until the mind loses all sense of depth and scanners read in looping spirographs. Then, nearer and terribly intimate, _where to go_ becomes _where to turn_ as the question consolidates itself within the cockpit of a single ship--his ship--and pins itself between the reality of his past dozen choices, and never before having company he didn’t intend to encase in carbonite.

He autopilots the ship, but stalls over the controls regardless. The craft hums along a set path, easy as anything. The Mandalorian's grip is purely decorative. 

He trades what's perfunctory for what's necessary, and collects the child. 

He holds him back-to-chest, allowing him to face outward, as though he should learn the way they're going and commit to memory the short turns, uneven step, and where to duck one's head. As if such is a problem he could face.

Given what’s behind them and what’s surely to come, the Mandalorian thinks he’d be better off trying to show the child how to handle a blaster.

They didn’t do any of this before Sorgan; that was their first, best chance and the Mandalorian isn’t more shocked than disappointed it didn’t work out for him--for either of them--he’s more shocked at the _depths_ of his disappointment.

They get to the base of his ship; it isn't a particularly long journey. 

They look from where the floor would unfurl if they were landed, to the armory--locked--and to the bathroom, which the Mandalorian has thoughtfully put a heavy slab of spare hull over, to prevent the child from falling in.

(The Mandalorian allows himself the absurdity of the image: this tiny being--fought over, killed for, defended, lost, and twice stolen--sucked right into nothingness. He thinks, _Let the whole guild follow their blinking fucking fobs into deafening space._ )

They look until there’s nothing else to look at except--

The Mandalorian says, "Well." 

He says, "Here." 

The Mandalorian’s quarters assume a wedge of space between his armory and the hull. It is two walls essentially blocked off by a makeshift third: the carbonite slabs of his bounties. When he’s had a profitable go of things, the room narrows substantially. 

There’s a cot sat flush against the far wall, beyond which is one of his ship’s engines. If he had a mind for company, the bed would obsensibly be nearer the quieter center of the ship, but no one’s ever slept while he’s been piloting--nor has _he_ slept while someone else commanded his ship.

On icy, desolate moons, he’s gotten some sleep. 

Hidden in the jungles of Yavin 4, he convalesced for a week over a smattering of broken ribs. 

And he rode out one hell of a concussion on a quiet little moisture farm on Tatooine. 

The Mandalorian remembers his haunts, and returns there time and again for much-needed rest. He does this intermittently so as not to be mistaken for having a pattern or a preference. 

Though, in surveying the space, _preference_ proves too strong a word. There's little to suggest he’s acquired something so refined. 

There's a blanket and a pillow, both made from the same material as his cloak--meaning nothing is particularly soft or soothing. He's more heartened by the child's own wears: the design's exterior proves sturdy and worn, while the insides are buttery-soft. It's oversized, but no so much that the child cannot move with it.

It was made generously by a hand who saw greater things for the child than infancy, abandonment, and experimentation. 

He sets the child on the bed and stares.

For so small a ship, his room suddenly feels parsecs removed from the cockpit. 

The child stares back, and the Mandalorian thinks he’s somehow accepting of why they had to abandon Sargon, lush and plentiful as it was with cool ponds, sunlight, and kind faces. At the very least, he doesn’t seem heartbroken, like Cara Dune said. He supposes what was to be feared by any young being hadn’t come to pass: the child wasn’t left behind. 

On short, wide set legs, the child walks easily to the pillow. He points and looks at the Mandalorian, like he understands the relationship of the place to this man who he has never seen take to it. 

The Mandalorian hates to muddy the lesson, but he takes the child again into his arms, and returns swiftly to the quiet and gentle hum of his console, and the slow procession of entire worlds as they pass them by. 

He makes a makeshift pallet in the corner with his cloak, which he wraps around the child, loose enough for it to draw a length about itself, snug enough to keep him stationed in a single place.

The Mandalorian says, “Well.”

He says, “Here, then.” 

-

Before Sorgan, the Mandalorian's escape plan included any of a number of secluded ice planets. He’s adept at flying in snow storms and his ship is suited for unrepentant cold; others are not so practiced and half as prepared. He eschewed that plan for the greenery and warmth of Sorgan, which the child seemed to appreciate. 

There wouldn't be swarms of wholesome villagers to mark their arrival, he thinks--though not ungratefully--as he plots a new course. 

-

It’s not a thing he takes pains at arriving to: he has to find and kill his client. 

Doing so may be his only chance at removing the bounty on the child’s life, and if the Imperial hold-on is flush with _still more_ Beskar steel, the Mandalorian will gladly relieve him of that, too. 

It is, however, a long game. It will take time, planning, and a few more favors than he has at his disposal. He'll need a wary eye and a steady shot, both of which only serve him so well if he's rested and ready. 

And beyond that--it's simply unpleasant. 

He does good, clean work--as far as can be done in bounty hunting. Asking questions already put him at odds with the guild; to take a client's bounty and _then_ come back around and kill the client is the kind of thing that does not go unnoticed by the wider galaxy--both in terms of governing bodies, and those factions that would overtake them.

The Mandalorian is certain his client has deeper dealings with underground Imperial strongholds. That much promises both sympathizers and firepower, each their own brand of dangerous. 

He can imagine his search will align him with rebel forces--but he hopes not. Most living rebels he's met have more ideals than sense, and are near insufferable about it. 

Much of the old guard has either died or gone to ground. 

After Sargon, he can certainly understand the appeal.

He yawns--not an easy task under a helmet. 

Perhaps he indulged too much in Sargon's peaceable atmosphere, because suddenly, his body craves regular, uninterrupted sleep, and behaves as if wronged for being denied as much. 

It's just as well that he's got their next planet in his sights. 

They arrive through a belt of ice that feels like earth, except they keep passing through. Waves of it crackle over the ship's hull, dissolve as they spear into the open engines. It's a persistent, ready hum of natural opposition to their being there.

The weather soon clears, and from ice they slip into a gentle snow. It appears as a haze across grey-blue skies, which rest imperceptibly over a desolate terrain. 

It's entirely quiet.

This place is not without life--there is a thicket of trees the Mandalorian intends to station his ship among--but there's nothing here to howl its name into the dark. 

The child, who has already slept, is wide awake and attentive. The Mandalorian, fatigue overtaking him, lays on his cot. The child stands across from him, staring. 

He tells the child not to touch anything, adding, “This isn’t like the console. I really mean it.”

He doesn't intend to sleep long, and startles to wakefulness every few minutes to confirm the child hasn't gotten into something. Knives, blasters, unrefined carbonite--the list goes on. 

Half-addled with sleep, his mind wanders. He considers the child, its form, how it portends to _be_ in an environment reflective only of the Mandalorian's own narrow purpose and deliverance. 

He looks strange here. He looks strange in general, old in a way he isn't yet, glossy black eyes more knowing than seeing--but his place is muddied by the lack of associative materials. The Mandalorian wishes he still had the child’s egg-shaped crib, but knows they'll never chance returning to that outpost to fish it out of the garbage. 

He needs _something..._

The thought is his last before exhaustion steals him totally from consciousness. His breath slows and tension spills away from his body, as if draining from every coiled muscle. 

The Mandalorian sleeps and the child allows it. 

-

There’s no better look to be had at the planet. 

At least, this is what the Mandalorian insists when the child toddles out of his sleeping quarters and towards the doors, expectant of an adventure. 

The Mandalorian lets him stand there, wanting and wanting and slow to learn better.

In this rare moment of privacy, he cleans himself. He tends to the wounds that, even after a few peaceful weeks, have flayed open again. There are new marks too, he thinks, that he didn't notice earlier or else can no longer pinpoint their deliverance. It’s nothing compared to what it’s been--what it could have been again, if that mudhorn hadn’t been interrupted in its charge. 

The Mandalorian has known his face so beaten and pulpy, he’s nearly been unable to unmask himself. For all the blood thats burst from his nose and mouth in a brawl, he’s almost drowned while securing a bounty-- _twice._ The instances hurt, of course, but never so much as to demand that one, undoable deed. His thinking has always been this: if the pain is so grave that he feels destined for death, that’s all the more reason to keep the helmet fastened in place. 

He’ll have died a Mandalorian, a fact that affords him some honor. That much will always mean something to those who are stripped of everything else. 

As he tests a particularly blue patch of skin, a groan gasses through his torso, but the Mandalorian grits his teeth and stays its passage.

Pain is unique; a person can be trapped in its grip for a lifetime, despite moving on and into the world. It’s no different than carbonite, filling up its hosts as it swallows them, and together transcending time. 

The child returns from where he stood waiting at the door. The Mandalorian clocks the time passed through his visor. 

“Took you ten minutes to lose your faith in me. I’m almost touched.”

The line doesn’t get a response; the child has moved on and is entirely expectant for something else, now.

The Mandalorian keeps rations on board--a necessity, given the variety of his work, the fact that he could be tracking a bounty for weeks, and even then--it’s a surer thing one stops at a bar or a brothel than for a good meal. 

They’re small, about the size and shape of pearls, and when they expire, much the same consistency. He’d picked them up special at a distant outpost known to be frequented by smugglers. They’re loose in a drawer, scattered and rolling between spare tools and an excess cabling for his ship. He fishes them out, and tries to separate as best he can between the brown-green and red-orange of proteins, and the marbling blue partial to hydration. 

He joins the child on the ground, and spills out a selection between them.

He pinches one between his forefinger and thumb, then makes an awkward attempt at mining its consumption. It pings against the metal of his helmet, and it’s not an appetizing sound. 

“You eat it,” he says, though the child looks doubtful. 

And admittedly, he understands. 

“It’s not half as good as the real thing,” he allows. “But it’ll keep you from starving.” 

While his body has grown accustomed to his infrequent diet and his brutal lifestyle, he’s not a prideful fool: he knows the form that lives under his armor is weaker than the will behind it. He knows better food and regular sleep would benefit him in the long run. 

It’s just, he’s never considered much for himself beyond his next bounty. 

Leaving one massacred people for another, witnessing a pillaged and brutalized land--none of it lends itself to future imaginings. 

A child, though.

A child does this inherently.

The Mandalorian puts his hand through some of the pearl-shaped rations in an attempt to make them scatter and seem exciting. He gives a sample of hydration to the child; they are the least offensive and most practical. 

The child holds it ahead of his face, miming the Mandalorian’s gesture, but similarly, he does not eat.

The child makes a progressively disinterested face over each offering as the Mandalorian trades one ration for another. He does this silently and without judgment, only studied curiosity. There is no instruction he can provide to this alien species; it’s not entirely up to him to determine what the child needs and wants. It will act on what is natural, or it will die. 

Except, the child accepts nothing. 

Any variety of proteins and a smattering of vegetation options--condensed, dehydrated, held in a miniscule and filmy capsule--are by no means appetizing, but by design they answer for a necessity. Yet all are passed over.

“Bone broth and frogs,” he sighs, as if the child has spoken and named all that is fit to consume. “You won’t come across such amenities everywhere. You’ve got to expand your palate.” 

The child’s displeased expression does not yield. 

The Mandalorian finds himself dragging his voice out of his guttural monotone and raising it into something less contemptuous, and more commanding.

“Someone wanted you dead or alive, and threw a bunch of credits around to have it done. You don’t give that person the satisfaction, you understand? Ever. You do anything to survive. You eat to survive. So, eat.”

He knows it’s fear--not anger--that spurs his outburst. As he watches the child responds in kind, slowly pressing the ration into his mouth, he finds he’s not comfortable with the lack of difference. 

He sighs. 

He knows he’s not wrong.

He also knows not every lesson must be held in reality’s iron grip, and summarily beat into its students. They’re safe for the moment, stolen away into this blue-darkness and icy reprieve. 

He turns to the child, some kind of mangled apology ready to spill from his mouth, as shapeless as soup, when he sees the fear is gone from those glossy black eyes.

The child puts another ration into his mouth. 

And another.

This is steely showmanship. This is _bravado_ from a creature as tall as the span of his ears is wide. 

The Mandalorian huffs a broken laugh. He takes the next bead from the child’s grip.

He says, “Point made, you little maniac.”

He says, softer now, “You’re going to get a stomach ache.” 

-

The child _does_ get a stomach ache, but sleeps it off in the Mandalorian’s cot. 

Time seems to hold itself at a distance here; the perpetual darkness allows him to think they’re hiding well enough, but for how long? And how long is too long? Even the concept of rest and recovery is loose--what is the healing process for a child’s attempt at literally swallowing his pride? 

It’s enough to make him nervous, which the Mandalorian does not appreciate. He decides, instead, to figure this place out. He decides to master it with observation. 

On one of his later trips from his room to start the engines and ready the ship--a regular practice to keep parts from freezing--the Mandalorian collects the child, who rises like one of the planet's twinned moons into wakefulness. 

They sit in the cockpit, the Mandalorian reclining in his seat, the child resting in the crook of his arm. 

They watch the snow and ice melt off the console window. 

Then, through a perpetually black-box sky, they witness the impossibility of darkness whited out with snow. The room becomes brighter for it, and eventually comes to reflect in shades of green and blue from the humming console, and the pair is cast in an eerie glow.

They hold in place. The ship is slow to cool again, but when it does, the Mandalorian begins the process again. They watch snow and ice melt away in favor of a view of still more snow and ice. What was lost is overtaken, and it is no less strange and wonderful a sight than the first time. 

-

The idea strikes him somewhere between the second and third melts. 

He returns the to pearl-like rations and makes a careful selection. With a tin of water boiled hot off a coil he'd rigged to protrude from the hull--a makeshift resolution to a fleeing bounty, who the Mandalorian stabbed and kept skewered in place. (The carbonite, he'd advised, would be a more pleasant arrangement. But the bounty claimed he was claustrophobic.) 

With his heat source and tin, he breaks down the rations and attempts a soup.

He thinks he’s made a waste of things to start, but the aroma balloons over the tin, then spills out in a warm, wet cloud. The liquid settles into a dark, deep green. It bears a strange, swirling distance, as if a forest has confused itself for an ocean. 

It's not how he tends to describe food. More often than not, his terms are simple, practically bare: edible and not. 

But the depth here, the unfurling of scent and color and how each must lend itself to to an unmistakable origin, the intent he has to make it behave this way, is… nice. 

He means to bring it back to the cockpit for the child, but the small being is not a step behind the Mandalorian as he attempts his alchemy. They dine there on the floor, the child taking that first eager taste. 

The child delights in the creation, seeing it not as a compromise, but a gift. He slurps and babbles and upends the bowl until the meal is finished. 

His large eyes are halved by encroaching green lids. The child is smiling, or at least making a considerable attempt. He looks stated and happy. 

"We like soup," the Mandalorian agrees. 

It's part of a growing list for the child: frogs, Jawas, buttons, switches, levers, people, tall grass, short grass, ponds, krill, jam. The Mandalorian suspects he places well on that list, though he won't risk putting himself ahead of frogs. 

Hubris only breeds disappointment. 

The Mandalorian can't claim so extensive a list, but he has idled with pleasures. There’s a reason Greef Karga works predominantly out of bars and brothels across the galaxy; that's where his business--hunters and bounties alike--tend to congregate. 

Worlds have been conquered, homelands razed, people and livelihoods scoured to ruin. When the skies have been blackened with Imperial invaders, a dark hovel is its own escape. A few drinks, ample spice, endless nights with bought company--the Mandalorian can see how the distraction is worth running a costly deficit when the alternative is to live fully in a world that is bankrupt already. 

He’s tracked and intercepted enough lives throughout worlds to know people’s needs are roughly the same. The things they crave and those they settle for perch as neat as Porgs along a sliding scale. 

The more he sees, the more he knows people's routines, the less he is inclined to wonder what could deafen his own troubles.

The helmet does enough to stifle temptation, and if he’s going to drink or smoke, he’d rather do so in the privacy of his own ship. As for fucking, he meets more than enough people who like the idea of their heated faces reflected in his Beskar helmet, witnessing their own wholesale euphoria as they exprience it.

In these instances, the Mandalorian didn't deal in credits: only his release for their delight. He quickly learned the exchange wasn’t worth it, that submitting himself to novelty status was--at its core--different from being bested in battle or outwitted in the chase. He found he could live without most of life's more humbling practices, that whatever emptiness inside him could sharpen its edges in perpetuity; they'd never pierce his armor. 

Not two feet from him, the child has upturned the tin and stood atop it. It raises its stubby arms in apparent victory. 

For the first time in a long time, the Mandalorian thinks of his family, and the thoughts aren’t broken and chaotic. They’re from before: quiet evenings tucked into one another, his mother telling stories, his father stroking her hair, his gaze adoring, his arms drawn about his entire little family. When he was young enough and small enough, the Mandalorian remembers being held in his entirety, a curled figure fit in the crook of an arm. He thinks back and imagines they must have looked like a letter--something drawn with a flourish and crafted from script, not the ugly and perfunctory Galactic Basic.

His parents--or more accurately, an amalgamation of his mother’s wits and his father’s determination, their collective and particular brand of ceaseless compassion and grit--secured him from a besieged city and kept him alive-- _yes._

But before that, they held him close. Fed him, taught him. They gave him every day before as surely as they made possible every day to come.

The Mandalorian thinks about his family often--or tries to. It is a part of the Way, to cherish beginnings. He worries he does this incorrectly, worries he dwells too deeply on what was lost. He thinks this is because there were so few people with whom to process it, after. They were all so much older and seemed to understand immediately what he could not.

He smooths a hand over a slab of Beskar-forged amour, the piece made to fit about his left thigh. He tests its weight and considers the slight curvature of its design. 

He sighs. 

It is--as intended--a perfect fit. 

Looking ahead of him, the Mandalorian studies the child, who is awake and watching him. He has again taken to the Mandalorian's cloak, circling it round and burrowing sidelong into it. 

He isn’t sure who had the idea first.

"Sorry," he says, and pulls the cloak free from the child. He tears a sizable piece lengthways, and returns the remaining sum. 

Then, with a sure hand, he detaches the piece of armor fit against his left leg. 

Beskar steel speaks loudly of having earned it, or having something of great value under its guise. Only his own kind truly see the feature for its purpose; all eyes better trained to spot a prize will see him for withholding one. 

While considering this, he course corrects. 

He doesn't think about what he is doing so much as the necessary outcome, and the fact that he'd have been wise to have thought of it earlier. 

With a needle and thread procured from a gear pouch stashed above the ship’s console, he begins to sew what he intends to be a sleeve into which he can slide in and secure the Beskar plate. The placement is not-quite a third of the way into the length of fabric. His stitches aren't the most delicate--or straight--but he wants a snug fit. He slows down, takes a breath, and works towards the vision he has. 

This isn't like trying to suture a gash in his own arm; it may be a necessity, but it's not a race against time. He even has slack to work with, here. 

When he's finished, the piece's mirror-polish disappears into the pocket, and he sews it closed. Considering how he won the stuff, the Mandalorian finds he doesn't miss its gleam.

He first spreads out his creation and allows the child to inspect his craftsmanship. Then, he gathers it up, knots the ends together, and dons it like any other piece of armour: he tests its weight, adjusts the placement. 

"Trust me," he says as the child regards his altered style warily. 

He lifts the child and sets him between his chest and the Beskar piece hidden inside the sling. It's a snug fit, but he expects that's what's needed. 

He doesn't know yet what is to come, but he has unrivaled clarity in one prevailing notion: they will be prepared for it.

 _A makeshift armored papoose,_ he'll say, if ever he's confronted for the loss of a piece of his Mandalorian armor. 

_For the child._

_For my--_

The Mandalorian says, “Well.”

He says, “Here.”

The child gums at the fabric covering the Beskar slab. The Mandalorian thinks he has some understanding of what has been afforded to him--perhaps not the tradition, not the prestige, but something baser. 

He is not alone.

He has a protector--a veritable gun for hire who has thrown away his sterling reputation for a curious little life. The Mandalorian thinks the intent goes without saying. Or rather, he hopes not to have to explain himself. 

He knows the child can't see his mouth moving to better associate the words.

He says it regardless: "This is how it's going to be." 

He thinks, _How it should have been._

And, _I'm sorry._

He clears his throat, digging deep for greater confidence, and surprising himself for not coming up short. 

"You and me, kid."

The child coos and settles into a weight, a presence, and ultimately: a heartbeat, compressed and small, held against his own. 

Although the presence is as alien as the child himself, the Mandalorian finds he doesn’t feel particularly overwhelmed or unsure of himself. It’s as though the rules have always been there, always a part of him. He knows them as plainly as if they’ve announced themselves in one of Greef Karga’s bounty discs. 

_Name, species, last known location._

_Safety, nourishment, understanding._

When his mother guided him through the bombed-out remains of their city--when his father closed the hatch door on him--when the Mandalorians took him in--these were his mandate, _his_ Way. 

He’s had to learn how to survive, had to be taught the cost of doing business. But he’s always known why every act of defense and defiance is justifiable. 

To claim a life was to assume one’s own end. 

Of any degree of sacrifice, it was understood: _I'll do this for you._ All the better if it is never explicitly said, but exemplified through action, even if that action is divvied out under the guise of murderer, amature armorer, and homemaker.

The Mandalorian paces. He pretends it is an effort to test the contraption and ensure the child does not slip out, but in truth, the design is as sound as it is simple. He is instead calming his nerves. 

It is a difficult thing to settle into a silent agreement concerning the rest of his natural life, to proclaim openly to whom and what it is owed. This is--ostensibly--his second time around, but now he finds himself more at odds.

He knows better now what he’s getting himself into.

But the steel on his chest and the stolen life pressed against it feel compatible in a way that much hasn’t. It’s his hands on his blaster, the change in the air he can _feel_ despite being covered from head to toe. It is an echo filling a vacuum of space at his back that causes him to pitch forward and bend around his young charge. 

This partnership--and it is nothing less, because even for understanding nothing as to _how_ it was done, the Mandalorian knows he would not have walked away from a charging mudhorn without the child’s intervention--is by no means a strategic move. There’s a galaxy of guild members on their tail, the remnants of the Empire financing the hunt. 

There are scores of dead bodies back on Greef Karga’s favorite outpost, there’s another left to rot in the forests on Sargon, and more to come.

There’s absolutely nothing to suggest the last four weeks aren’t the last they’ll have, that they won’t be shot out of the sky on their departure. 

That much, at least, is agreed: what the Mandalorian has done thus far, he’d do again. 

With some planning and more luck than he’s comfortable banking on, they’ll take these past five weeks and double it. 

They’ll do it again and again, under new moons and old, in silence and among friends, with soup. 

A happy existence may be too much to hope for, but if it is to be had even halfway, there is no surer protection than Beskar steel and the Mandalorian's own will to test it. 

.


End file.
